An important function of home and business computers today is printing electronic documents to hard copies. Numerous technologies exist for rendering digital files onto paper, such as inkjet and laser printers. Indeed, even three-dimensional printing is emerging and becoming available to consumers.
These printing systems often provide numerous options for controlling their operation. Among other things, printers can be configured to adjust colors, to convert color documents to black and white, to print at various resolutions, to add watermarks to documents, and so on. A user of a printing system may select these options through a user interface operated by software on the user's computer, through a built-in control panel on the printing device, through a network protocol such as SNMP, and in various other ways. Printer driver interfaces are the subject of U.S. Pat. Nos. 7,280,241, 6,134,019, 7,187,461, 6,967,734, all of which are commonly assigned with the present application to Xerox Corporation and are incorporated in their entirety herein by reference.
Due to the proliferation of printing options, a user may have difficulty understanding all of the options and identifying the ones desired. In particular, the user may not find it easy to visualize the cumulative effects of a combination of the selected options and how that combination of options will appear when printed. The user may resort to printing a document out solely to determine whether the printing options require adjustment. Such an option is wasteful of paper and printing supplies, and is thus undesirable.